


if gold rusts (what then can iron do)

by TolkienGirl



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Tony Angst, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony keeps trying to pick up his own pieces, so much pain in one life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 11:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6903568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t know where this leaves him. He doesn’t know why everyone leaves him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if gold rusts (what then can iron do)

**Author's Note:**

> Title quote from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

He remembers that it was night, but it felt as though he were flying near the sun. Hammer ringing on metal, and Thor was a god but Tony ruled his own universe.

Steve had made them stop fighting. Steve, with his shield. Steve, who led them.

Steve, who knew.

 

Tony picks up a coffee cup, unwashed. The stain at its base is irregular, brown, splashed like dried blood. Tony hurls it against the wall without much energy, but it smashes anyway.

He cancelled three speaking engagements. Couldn’t show them the fireworks of Tony Stark’s rewritten memories. Dancing so close to the line of what’s inside, for a few cheap thrills.

He didn’t tell his father he loved him.

Steve didn’t tell him that he knew.

 

He puts the Secretary of State on hold and smirks as he does it, the old Tony Stark smile. But Pepper isn’t there to roll her eyes, Pepper doesn’t know the whole story.

Nobody is there, nobody at all.

Tony thinks he’s going to burn Steve’s letter, but he doesn’t.

 

It’s night, it’s always at night.

It’s night because if you fly high enough, the sun gets blotted out. He said goodbye to Pepper while he flew like Icarus, bearing a missile.

He didn’t think he’d make it back down.

Part of him wishes he hadn’t.

 

Behind the pain there’s unfairness, the fact that Steve Rogers is golden, has always been golden. And Tony, even in his own universe, is iron. Serviceable and hard, a tool to be used. But never beautiful, never precious.

Steve Rogers should be dead. He is almost a century old.

He has more friends than Tony does, and all without trying.

_He’s my friend._

_So was I,_ Tony said. Because they were, weren’t they? It wasn’t fair—Tony should have been the one to throw away that friendship after the betrayal, Tony should have been the one to let go. But Steve didn’t need him.

Steve’s letter says he’ll come back, if Tony needs _him_.

 

Tony staves off law enforcement, high-ranking government officials. The Accords are off the table. There is no table.

He doesn’t know where this leaves him. He doesn’t know why everyone leaves him.

 _I am Iron Man_ , and the crowd goes wild.

The crowd will always go wild, Tony knows. It offers him nothing.

His life has fallen apart in caves, in back country roads, in echoing bunkers with two or three other people. Never in front of a crowd.

 

He didn’t think Steve would make that kind of choice for him. He didn’t think Steve would be able to. He didn’t think that the fight would come to them, a battlefield with only friends on it.

He _did_ think Pepper would leave him—that was why he didn’t let himself love her for a long time.

Pepper knew who he was, and she grew tired of it.

She would have loved him forever if he’d died in the New York City sky, above the sun, below the stars.

He made it back down.

He made a thousand mistakes.

He made too many friends.

He let his parents go.

Part of him wishes he hadn’t.


End file.
